Donmai

Changing 7-Eleven to a Copyright Tag

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WRS

I'm a bit iffy on going ahead and changing the category of Circle K Sunkus mostly because I'm not certain about the approach to brands being either a copyright or general tag (otherwise I probably would've after first seeing this BUR). For what it's worth, whatever the decision ends up being, worth noting that there's also Circle K (Store) (one post). Not sure if they refer to the same thing.

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winterless

Admittedly, I am confused as well. What would be the standard operating procedure for determining whether a brand should be a gentag or a copyright tag?

There seems to be a general consensus here that the 7-Eleven tag doesn't warrant a change to being a copyright tag, yet I could argue the same about Amazon (Company) since it also doesn't have an official mascot (as far as I know anyway), and its wiki only remarks upon the logo. As far as I can tell from the tags using the post, it's added wherever there is an Amazon logo or it's the subject of the post. The 7-Eleven tag is used the same.

YouTube, as well, would not fit the mentioned criteria, since it's used for posts that feature parodies or references to YouTube. When reduced to youtube copytags:1 the only results are mistagged (with the singular exception of a fan-created anthropomorphism).

In fact, let's go a bit further: ebay also has a copyright tag despite having no anthropomorphisms, and bing is largely populated by the works of Merryweather comics with the exception being a reference to a meme. The only company copyrights that would fit the requirement of needing an anthropomorphism (or otherwise having anime-related promotional media) would be McDonald's, Burger King and Lawson.

My reasoning for why 7-Eleven should be turned into a copyright tag is that, firstly, it is a copyright and a company, and secondly, it does feature a fair amount in artwork as either promotional/official artwork or as set pieces in fan work. I don't see why it shouldn't be elevated to a copyright tag, especially since other companies have been set as copyright tags.

Further edit: If the criteria is that the associated copyright should at least have had a promotion with a related anime/manga IP, then yes, 7-Eleven does count as well, since it collaborated with Love Plus years ago (see: post #1146961, post #1146959, post #1146957) and Neon Genesis Evangelion more recently (post #4538970).

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winterless

Damian0358 said:

YouTube Monkey.

This doesn't really disprove my point. In fact, it just highlights the discrepancy that's at play here.

Firstly, yes, YouTube Monkey is a mascot, but it was only used for error messages, and as far as I know, was never used for promotional purposes, and has been quietly discontinued in its role. Regardless, it's only been posted three times to this site, and doesn't seem to hold any influence or memetic relevance in internet history.

Secondly, Coprolite's comment on post #4844531 led me down a minor rabbit hole. Three years ago, YouTube was a gentag rather than a copyright tag, and Coprolite highlighted the discrepancy there, pointing out that twitch.tv, BiliBili, and NicoNico were copyright tags, whereas YouTube was not. The same explanation was given, that YouTube does not have a mascot—which, if we're going by that superlative criteria, the YouTube Monkey did not count as one back in 2021, seeing as no one in the thread considered it to be a valid contribution to the discussion. The thread then came to no conclusion, yet three years later, YouTube is now a copyright tag, and we've come full circle with yet another Danbooru user pointing out a discrepancy in copyright tagging, and then getting told that it can't be done because of criteria that doesn't seem to mesh with the reality of what Danbooru has put into practice.

If we're going to strictly enforce the use of the copyright tag to things that have associated characters, then...

Why is Amazon a copyright tag? Why is ebay a copyright tag? Why is Bing one? Why are:
- Netscape
- Facebook
- UC Browser
- DuckDuckGo
- Denny's
- Subway (Company)
- In-N-Out Burger
- Whataburger
- Levi's
- Culver's
- 7Up
- Mountain Dew
- Evian
- Fanta
- Minute Maid
- Coca-Cola (as far as I know there's no official anime mascot for them)
- C.C. Lemon
(and so much more)

... all copyright tags, yet 7-Eleven isn't one? If the criteria is expanded to include fan-created personifications, then yes, 7_Eleven-Tan status:deleted exists. If the criteria is expanded even more to include characters wearing uniforms associated with the company, then, yes, 7-Eleven absolutely counts: (post #1146961, post #1146959, post #1146957, post #2279701, post #2285929, post #2291768, post #2029871, post #2571314). If we're expanding it even further to notability and whether we need to add recognisable anime girls into the equation at all, then... yes, absolutely, 7-Eleven is notable enough that people draw food items from 7-Eleven (post #7779515, post #4316306, post #4411075) and feature it as set pieces within their compositions, such as: wouldn't it be cool to have a literal dragon atop a 7-Eleven? (post #7714196).

I really don't understand the discrepancy here. All the previously mentioned companies wouldn't pass the litmus test, nor did YouTube all those years ago, yet while it gets turned into a copyright tag... apparently an internationally recognizable convenience store franchise is a bridge too far.

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Damian0358

I would say that it does disprove your point as far as it comes to associated characters. The YouTube Monkey is not a mascot, but just an official associated character - but just being an official associated character alone is enough, because they would have no other valid choice for a copytag except original or nothing at all, with the former being ill-fitting and the latter unacceptable. And if you were to take note, three years ago is also roughly when the first tagged post containing the YouTube Monkey was uploaded, hence why the tag's category changed. The forum thread didn't bring it up because no one in said thread noticed that post had been uploaded yet.

Same thing happened with Coca-Cola. We finally got posts featuring the Coca-Cola Polar Bears on Danbooru, and that inspired a category change. On the flip side, you have the case of Kakukaku Shikajika, whose copytag would be Daihatsu, but the tag currently remains a gentag, because no one has bothered to change it yet.

As to why so many of these tags are copytags, the answer could be as simple as "the user who made the category change either doesn't know or doesn't care about these practices, or is otherwise operating on outdated practices (think how ship tags used to be turned into chartags due to personifications, before personifications got their own tags)". Looking at the tags, and taking into consideration that the Tag History feature has only been a thing since September 2022, not mentioning Coca-Cola, the following tags were manually changed from gentags to copytags: Subway (July 2023), Mountain Dew (June 2023), Evian (October 2022), Fanta (August 2024). Subway didn't have anything uploaded around that time to justify that change, so one can only assume it's because of Jared Fogle and post #2668354, which seems questionable; Mountain Dew coincides with post #6428036, which does not qualify, so this is a strike-out; the latest Evian post at the time was post #4312319, which makes it seem like the user saw the other drinks and thought "so i guess this should be a copytag too" without considering whether it actually should be, which doesn't seem to be the case; and Fanta also doesn't have any uploads around that time to justify the change.

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winterless

Damian0358 said:

As to why so many of these tags are copytags, the answer could be as simple as "the user who made the category change either doesn't know or doesn't care about these practices, or is otherwise operating on outdated practices (think how ship tags used to be turned into chartags due to personifications, before personifications got their own tags)".

To be perfectly honest, this is because Danbooru's official stance on copyrights is incredibly counterintuitive. Even browsing the wiki on copyright guidelines gives me rule violations as soon as I click on one of the examples or even on the page itself, considering that, for example, nismo, dunlop, and ren'ai circulation should be gentags, yet they're listed as copytags. While I won't dispute that this is the ruling, it is so consistently incorrectly applied that in order to course-correct, we would have to go through hundreds of BURs in order to change and then maintain them against well-meaning users who are suddenly confused why something like twitch.tv or Bluesky or facebook are not considered copyrights by Danbooru's definition, while twitter is, simply because of the twitter bird.

Can we do this? Certainly. But I don't think that it would be a worthwhile endeavour, because not only does it not make any intuitive sense, it also would raise even more questions due to how even more inconsistently applied it would be. The way that it is (incorrectly) done highlights the topic or the focus of the artpiece in the majority of the use cases. For example, in post #8355174, if Bluesky was correctly listed as a gentag (as it does not have an official associated character/mascot), then the copyright category would simply be populated by twitter, and a user would be confused as to where the bluesky tag is, until they find it in the sea of blue links in the general category.

Now, if we were to say that bluesky counts because of their butterfly logo counting as a mascot... then where shall we draw the line on brands counting and not counting? To me, it seems that the current prevailing tagging consensus (based upon the work of other users) on Danbooru on these copyrights is that an easily identifiable logo is what elevates it to being considered a copyright tag.

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Damian0358

winterless said:

To be perfectly honest, this is because Danbooru's official stance on copyrights is incredibly counterintuitive. Even browsing the wiki on copyright guidelines gives me rule violations as soon as I click on one of the examples or even on the page itself, considering that, for example, nismo, dunlop, and ren'ai circulation should be gentags, yet they're listed as copytags. While I won't dispute that this is the ruling, it is so consistently incorrectly applied that in order to course-correct, we would have to go through hundreds of BURs in order to change and then maintain them against well-meaning users who are suddenly confused why something like twitch.tv or Bluesky or facebook are not considered copyrights by Danbooru's definition, while twitter is, simply because of the twitter bird.

I mean, it doesn't help that that wiki hasn't gotten a rework to adjust for changes in policies, while also running into stuff that's always contentious. Ren'ai Circulation is a song, for instance, and songs have historically been quite inconsistent when it comes to category, as seen in the list of tagged songs; the only consistency is that idol songs generally are gentags and Vocaloid/vocal synth songs generally copytags. Twitch.tv, as seen in the YouTube thread you yourself linked, would have already been turned into a gentag by now if it weren't for the stuff that doesn't have replacement copytags right now. If niconico didn't have Terebi-chan et al, it's likely the creation of indie utaite would've turned it into a gentag. I have no idea on NISMO and Dunlop though (they are also not listed on howto:copyright).

Can we do this? Certainly. But I don't think that it would be a worthwhile endeavour, because not only does it not make any intuitive sense, it also would raise even more questions due to how even more inconsistently applied it would be. The way that it is (incorrectly) done highlights the topic or the focus of the artpiece in the majority of the use cases. For example, in post #8355174, if Bluesky was correctly listed as a gentag (as it does not have an official associated character/mascot), then the copyright category would simply be populated by twitter, and a user would be confused as to where the bluesky tag is, until they find it in the sea of blue links in the general category.

Now, if we were to say that bluesky counts because of their butterfly logo counting as a mascot... then where shall we draw the line on brands counting and not counting? To me, it seems that the current prevailing tagging consensus (based upon the work of other users) on Danbooru on these copyrights is that an easily identifiable logo is what elevates it to being considered a copyright tag.

The Twitter Bird is an odd case, because it's not actually synonymous with the Twitter logo, which is a separate tag. Bluesky might eventually follow in its wake if you start seeing way more art of the Bluesky Butterfly "serv[ing] purposes other than a logo, such as being redrawn or interacting with a character". But then comes the debate on whether or not that's happened already.

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